Day Fifteen
And then we scattered in the wind. Two of our group went on to Taiwan. Two more went to Hong Kong. Another went to Spain and Italy. Six others went home. The Wife and I, being only half done, had three more countries to visit.
It would take us two days to get to our next destination, Kathmandu, Nepal. We were going to fly from Beijing to Chengdu, spend the night, then catch another flight to Kathmandu the next morning (flights eight and nine).
We said our tear filled goodbyes at the airport as we went to check in to our respective flights. We reached the Air China counter and discovered that our flight would be delayed a couple hours (our first real delay). At the suggestion of the man behind the counter we rebooked on another flight getting us to Chengdu at our original scheduled time.
We arrived in Chengdu and picked up our luggage and started looking for our guide. Here is an area that General Tours drops the ball a little bit - they don't provide contact information for the guides, figuring you will get their numbers when they pick you up. The guide and driver were not there. I knew what had happened. They had checked our original flight, saw that it was delayed, and and had not come to the airport. If we'd had their contact numbers we could have called from Beijing and told them how our plans had changed. We found some empty chairs near the airport exit and waited. I, being a little impatient, wandered around the area making sure we hadn't just missed our guide's sign and checking on the arrival time of our original flight. Two and a half hours later our guide arrived. She was very apologetic but it wasn't her fault at all.
We spent the night at a hotel, not as nice as the one we stayed in during our first visit to Chengdu, but nice enough. I washed some clothes in the sink (shower gel works very well for cleaning clothes). We started a bad habit here and started watching bad movies in our room starting with "Christine". When there wasn't a movie we usually ended up on the Discover Channel or NatGeo Adventure (The programming on the international versions of these channels are more travel oriented and a bit more interesting than the domestic American versions which tend to be a lot of Nazis, Bigfoot, UFOs, and ghosts).
I was feeling a little bummed. I think I missed our group. We were heading to another country and would be on a private tour. We'd never done private tours like this before and we really didn't know what to expect.
Next morning we caught a flight To Kathmandu.
Our 2012 Asian Adventure continues ...
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